Christianity spread in Hungary thanks to the sanctity of the members of the royal family, who, for centuries, governed the country drawing inspiration from the Gospel and from the teaching of the Roman Church. Often they were not merely enlightened sovereigns; they were true and proper canonized saints in the Church. A characteristic sign that defined them was the attention for the poor. Noble by heritage, they were born in the royal palace; noble in spirit, they looked after lepers, derelicts and the sick, not only through foundations and donations but, in many cases, by taking care of them directly: feeding them, binding their wounds, dressing them and sometimes even carrying them literally on their shoulders. An alliance -that of throne, altar and shelter- typical of Medieval Christianity.
This charitable tradition is still alive and well in a part of the Hungarian Catholic world. Every week, I go to a shelter for homeless persons, which operates in the center of Budapest. They provide food, medicine, clothes and bureaucratic support to those who live on the street or in great poverty. There are many poor persons. The principal cause of this great number of needy is not the economic condition of the country. The motive is above all spiritual and it is tied to the crisis of the family: there are those who, sick, have been refused by relatives or by spouses and found themselves completely alone; there are those who, by choice, decide to refuse everything and everyone; there are those who fell into the vortex of alcoholism or have recently come out of jail. The majority of these persons suffer from psychological problems. The factors go hand in hand. My task consists above all in preparing the sandwiches in the morning, before the shelter opens. Then we have a moment of prayer with the volunteers and the workers of the shelter. Once those to be served arrive, I start to pour coffee, which is always widely requested. With a few of them, I will chat a bit, others ask if I can hear their confession. There are ex-college professors and some who are semi-literate. “Father, how can I not desire my neighbor’s goods if I live on the street and dig through trash cans to find something to eat?”.
Even in the smallest details, often without realizing it, we are made for more
There is a lady who, every time I approach her to pour some coffee in her little plastic cup, always asks: “Could you pour me a little more?”. At the beginning, I thought to myself: “But how? The cup is still empty; I haven’t even begun to fill it with coffee and she’s already complaining?! One of the many wacky characters around here…”. Then I understood that her request had a meaning: it expressed the desire, the need for that “something more” that lies in the heart of every man. It is not enough to have bread, drink, a pair of shoes or the right medication. Even in the smallest details, often without realizing it, we are made for more. At the beginning, it is translated into a bit of attention, a smile, a human gaze. But the need par excellence is that of God, of His truth and of His forgiveness. A few of these homeless have testified to me, often more than the well-off persons I meet, an exemplary poverty of spirit. Mihaly, a tattooed bouncer, knows the catechism better than my university students: when he asks me to discuss something, he does so with a moving humility. We are all poor beggars before God; we need to be saved. For this reason, we thank the Movement of Communion and Liberation which has given us a great awareness of being Christian and, through the education of charitable work, an instrument for living out this awareness in a concrete way. As Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote in his final work-testament on the Creed: “It is a mystery how the Lord will judge at the end, but from the Gospel we know that we will not be judged based on the loftiness of our thoughts or the profundity of our spiritual experiences but based on charity. I was hungry and you gave me to eat (or you did not give to me).”
